“Went out to lunch [this week] and had my first encounter with one of those new soda machines with thousands of combinations, the kind where you mix your own on a touch screen. There are no instructions, and the first time I poked at it I couldn’t get it to work. (Had an iced tea instead–supposed to be plain, but tasted vaguely of fake raspberry and was vile.) But then Meg explained it to me and I got back in line behind some people who knew what they were doing, and hey, monkey see, monkey do. I got green. Diet green.”It tasted exactly like it looks, but not only did I finish my first one, but got a second one to go. An artificially colored, artificially flavored, artificially sweetened, touch screen programmed, digital soda for the second decade of the new century, photographed in a minivan with an iPhone, tweaked on Instagram, forwarded by email, and blogged on WordPress: ladies and gentlemen, the mighty diet green.

(thanks to Meg for the Instagram photo. I think she used the low res filter.)

Hint: it’s on the Fanta screen. I’d read about these machines, but I’d never seen one before. The most interesting thing, I thought, was the lack of an instruction screen, but it was pretty intuitive once I realized that it moves a little more slowly than the internet on my home wifi. Makes sense, since I’m sure that anything designed to work in a restaurant environment and be operated by the general public has to sacrifice agility for simplicity and robustness.

Kinda surprising that the Freestyle machine hasn’t taken off in Japan– I would think that it would be popular there. I’m sure they will be everywhere here the next time you get back to the States. But yeah. I never got a flying car, but I can mix my own soda and write about it on the internet.

You should get the green next time. It tastes all green. And I think the pic looks awesome on the blog. I’m starting to think that I need an Apple thing with a camera so I can mess around with Instagram.